My understanding that the transmissions over modern fibers use all sorts of tricks to pack more information into it, including frequency modulation, multiple polarization states, etc. I wonder how this new frequency comb technique plays with those.

If Warren won't run, I'll vote for Bernie Sanders, the only Independant in Congress.

I sympathize with your view, but I hope you're not fooling yourself that someone who actually wants to stand up for the little guy has any chance of being nominated. Warren is demonized as a left-wing nut, and the most extreme thing she tried to do was to lower the student loan rate to match that the Fed is giving to the banks. Someone should import a few real left-wing nuts, put them up in some reality TV show, just so people get some sense as to what that really means.

I never understood the whole 'take your passport' thing. I was under impression that if I show up at the US embassy, say that I am a US citizen, that my passport was forcefully taken from me, and I want to go home, they'll go through some checks and give me the documents I need to go back. No?

This is what chicken hitting an engine looks like. The engine effectively explodes. The engine gets a "passing" grade in such a test as long as the blades flying out of the explosion are contained by the enclosure and don't immediately destroy the rest of the plane. If you think this is a minor event, you're deluding yourself.